Beaglebone Ai Heating Issues

Given what I've seen so far if i thought I'd get a reasonable explanation from Jason i would.

Cripes, that's a big fan. It does resemble what I think will be necessary to fully fix the problem. I just wonder where the

air will come from/go to when a HAT is on top of it since the fan is almost as tall as the GPIO headers. Long pins on the

HAT no doubt. And with a fan that big you are talking about fairly substantial power required to run it. Maybe use one of

the AI's PWM channels to help keep it in check?

Hi Christopher,

As I understand (I really don't know for sure but it seems to make sense) as you say, without the active cooling, it would throttle more, especially if it detects no cooling is attached. It's likely some heat management will be needed to run all cores and accelerators/EVE/DSP etc. at full load, and the software image could eventually detect when a fan cape is attached, to allow everything to run at a sustained top speed. But, since they knew that people would also want to run it immediately (i.e. without needing additional heat management), there is a small heatsink already mounted, and with threads to attach to a custom solution if required.

The software could detect the heatsink cape easily, since they still use that EEPROM thing I think? (I've never owned a BBB cape, so never checked if the software tries to read it at startup).

Anyway the thread is 3mm, and seems to be on a 20mm square, so is kind-of compatible with 25mm fans since they have their holes on a 20mm square too (although some of those have slightly smaller than M3 holes - so either a custom bracket could be used, or force the screw through the fan anyway, or use glue or tape, since the fan is lightweight).

I'm not 100% sure what I'm going to do, but most likely I'm going to sandwich mine between two sheets of acrylic, and have the fan attached to the top acrylic.. or wait for the fan cape, but it's hard to wait : )

A 40 or 50mm fan will fit between the headers, so that could be an option.. or try a flat heat pipe+heatsink, I'm thinking if there was an alu plate screwed on then the flat heat pipe could fit between it and the existing heatsink, and then going off to a heatsink on top of the acrylic.. that way there's no large heatsink pressing on the board.

The trick is to find that Cape Fan.  I have not been able to locate it.

From the SRM link I provided earlier, the suggested fan is one that screws to the top of the heat sink; X15FANKIT.  The Cape version seems like a cleaner option tough but certainly would draw some juice.

shabaz Kindly, open the damn laptop and remove any dust garbage blocking all of the vents. Also remove processor heatsink, clean both surfaces (processor & heatsink) & re-apply a good quality expensive thermal paste. It will do if you already haven't done that.
Same thing I suggest for ipv1. One more thing as suggested by tariq.ahmad try larger heatsink and fan. If you got any spare cpu fan( heatsink too, use seperate power supply) might help you, or try liquid cooler. Liquid cooler will help if you have limited space. Also, a lot more efficient in cooling.

- Mudz

As I understand, the fan cape still isn't released (just from grapevine so I could be wrong). It does look nice, in that video.

The X15FANKIT fan has 2.8mm holes (going by the part name in the photo of the fan), maybe they just suggest forcing the M3 screws through.

I've been searching at home to look for a suitable fan, but only came up with a 25mm fan (also with 2.8mm holes, but M3 could be threaded through it I reckon) and a 50mm fan, and 50mm is too big to fit between the connectors. Maybe this 5V 40mm fan5V 40mm fan could be suitable (i.e. if the BB-AI has some acrylic sheet or something mounted on top), it has 80mA current consumption.

Easier said than done.. It's glued shut, there's no screws. I'm fairly sure the Lithium cells are bulging, so it needs to go back to the store (fortunately in the UK there is by default a 6-year warranty period for products - provided I can show (i.e. the burden of proof is on me) that it was an 'inherent fault', which is easy to do in this particular situation.

"But, since they knew that people would also want to run it immediately (i.e. without needing additional heat management), there is a small heatsink already mounted, and with threads to attach to a custom solution if required."

The problem is that the small heat sink "to allow running it immediately" does not work. The custom solution is called a fan, and from the ongoing discussions I've read it is required right out of the box for even minimal operation.

Software frequency throttling should allow it to run without a fan and it will be useful later for overall power management but why it was not implemented or implemented properly (I have no idea which is correct) before shipping

product "that people could run immediately" is a very good question. At least it should be a rather quick and easy fix. For now I have a couple of 25mm 10K RPM fans on order (from Ebay) and I will not even think about powering

up my AI until one is installed. At 10K RPM it will probably scream like a banshee, luckily it will be a very small banshee.

I think ultimately that the BB-AI would operate in two (or more) modes, e.g (1) without the fan, any throttling could be more aggressive, or would run at a slower rate., and (2) with the fan cape (or if configured otherwise) then the BB-AI would operate in a higher performance, or a sustained performance mode.

That seems plausible, especially since some of the suggestions discuss upgrading the software image, to allow people to run the BB-AI without any fan or additional heatsink. The fan cape has been planned for a long time, so that too gives credence to the thought that they were aware that two modes would be used in software.

gdstew  wrote:

 

.. but why it was not implemented or implemented properly (I have no idea which is correct) before shipping

product "that people could run immediately" is a very good question. At least it should be a rather quick and easy fix.

You're right, it would have been a better experience for users if it was in the shipped image. Perhaps it just missed some integrating and testing window for their release timeframe. Presumably even without the fix, the BB-AI won't self-destruct, so the software release didn't need to match the hardware release timeframe. Again I'm just speculating (but it seems semi-plausible).

The first thing I do with a BeagleBone Black is to download the latest image, but then I'm used to that. Maybe with the BB-AI, there could be an assumption (true or not I don't know, not checked to see any release notes) that the pre-installed image is still very close to the released image, since it is a new product. I too intend to install a fan, but maybe a 40mm one, in the hope that it is quieter.

I've got a couple of 40mm fans but what I found was they have large motor hubs and very small blades which puts the blades too far away from

most of the heat sink for my liking although the SoC is offset from center by quite a bit and that may help. That and it will require some kind of

special mounting bracket or modified prototype cape. I hadn't thought about modifying a prototype cape until I wrote this and I have a couple

of Adafruit capes so I might do that if the 25mm fan doesn't work well enough. I was originally thinking about using tall nylon machine screws

for a temporary solution with the 40mm fan so I could get it up and running fast. The inside of the GPIO headers are a few mm more than

40mm apart and that could used to help wedge the fan in and prevent it from "walking" around too much.

I've placed an order for axial fansaxial fans for the Beaglebone ai.   If you received a bb ai and you wish to have a fan sent to you please contact me.